“I am not prepared to sit back, allow the Guptas to come in to our country, racially abuse us and break all our laws and loot our country and get away with it. It is for this reason that I am taking the matter to the court,” Mashaba told POWER Breakfast host Thabo Mdluli. “I am a black created image of God. They are saying we are lazy and corruptible.”

Mashaba says it’s about restoring the dignity of black people in South Africa.

In his statement, the mayor says he had recently engaged with former and current Gupta TV employees who had informed him of numerous accounts in which the station’s bosses allegedly uttered racial slurs against black employees, and black South Africans in general.

“Whilst these employees have requested, for now, that their identities remain protected from the media, they have indicated to me their willingness to come forward and relay their horrific accounts at the hands of the Guptas and their associates for the purpose of court action.

“They have also indicated the toxic work environment they experienced at the Midrand offices of Gupta TV.

“This information is corroborated by journalist Rajesh Sundaram, a former editor at Gupta TV, whose account of discriminatory and unfair working conditions, mainly affecting young black employees as well as migrant Indian workers, is captured in his book ‘Indentured: Behind the Scenes at Gupta TV’.

“Mr Sundaram recounts the many demeaning references the Gupta brothers, Atul and Ajay, made of South Africans, especially as they related to our alleged laziness and corruptibility,” he adds in his statement.